Users are almost always right

One of the rules of system design ought to be this:

When the users keep doing it wrong, the users are right and yoursystem is wrong.

I don't mean this in the sense that accommodating users is the rightthing to do; I mean this in a very pragmatic sense. If the users keepmaking some error, changing their behavior is going to be very difficultand therefor costly. (In a fight between user inertia and anything else,bet on user inertia.)

This means that changing


網吧的禁煙人生(難過的一次過)

1. 文明單位: 關於今次所謂選舉
嘉賓:馬嶽

2. 文明單位: 遊行文化
嘉賓:長毛、葉寶琳

3.
(文章刊於上星期日明報,這是一個比較多廢話的版本。)

一個業餘觀眾的失敗筆記


記得在大學時代,看到一位影評人在學生報的訪

這是一個無夢的城市


星爺講過:“人無夢,同條鹹魚有咩分別?”環顧澳門大街小巷,究竟有幾多個是人?幾多個是鹹魚?我們當然理解什麼叫“美國夢”、“香港夢”,甚至“中國夢”。把夢想寄託於某個地方,並且相信這個地方不會辜負人,憑

英文問題

在書店看到,給大家玩玩,以下英語有甚麼特別?

  • past experience
  • free gift
  • close proximity
  • empty space
  • frozen ice
  • multiple choice
  • unexpected surprise
  • armed gunman

應該不難看出吧!


搶攻離線運作之地

FineTune (Apollo 的應用之一 FineTune,使用感覺良好,可是好像沒得設定代理?)

現在很多新的 Web 2.0 服務出現,令我們的生活更貼近網絡世界。通過 Ajax 技術,網絡的服務表現得更像桌面軟件,我們也開始對這些新式 Ajax 應用漸漸熟識。不過用得


我被點名了

這兩天雜事多,沒有心情寫新東西,學生點我名要答問題,咁有我心,當然盡力完成,遊戲是年輕人玩的,我老皮老骨,已經不會有心跳的感覺,但願我的答案不會太悶蛋吧!

遊戲介紹:這是博客裏流行的擊鼓傳花遊戲,傳給誰

On educating users

In a context that's not important, someone on our local sysadminmailing list recently wrote:

I think the bottom line is end-user education.

I disagree. It is my opinion that any time end-user education appearsto be the answer, we have already lost. People do not change theirbehavior just because we want them to, and they rarely really changetheir behavior because we threaten them. (Although they are very good atfaking it until we are just enough out of sight.)

The


「『お元氣ですか?』『私は元気です.』 」

1.
新居受到所有人的肯定。雖然我仍然留戀沒有窗子的舊居,但為了建立新居的主體性,儘管遍體冰涼,仍然打開窗子讓風吹去,吹得頭腦發昏也無所謂。

有多久沒有對著窗子思考了?還能不能對著窗子思考?思考會與以前有

blogger 聚會 – 漫談傳媒

Meeting 01

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The three strata of virtualization

It struck me recently that you can view the general virtualizationworld as having three strata:

  • at the first level, people are just interested in virtualizing andisolating user-level programs. This is the world of FreeBSD jailsand Solaris zones.

  • at the second level, people are interested in virtualizing theentire operating system. This is the world of server consolidation,hypervisors, paravirtualization and so on.

  • at the third level, people actively want to virtualize even thehardware itself. This is often the world of testers and so